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Twilight's Romantic(?) Hero - A Video Essay
Posted By Saralyn on/at 2/26/2010 10:57:00 AM
After weeks and weeks of late nights, obsessing over minutiae, and searching frantically for "the right" music, I have completed my very first video essay. The topic: Twilight's Edward Cullen. The length: 5 1/2 minutes (6 with end credits). The place: below. (You may notice some glitches with the sound, where the audio from the video clips seems like it comes in earlier/later/continues longer than it should. This is a glitch in exporting from iMovie that started appearing out of the blue a few days ago. I've been withholding publishing this post in hopes of fixing it, but can't quite figure out what's going on.)
Twilight - The Epitome of Romance? by Saralyn Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
I'm fairly pleased with the video, considering it's my first attempt at anything like this and the first time in a number of years I've used iMovie (and the first time at this level of complexity). Some of the transitions are a little quick and I would've liked to hold some of the text placards a bit longer for emphasis, but some things get rushed when working within length constraints.
If I were to do a follow-up to this project, I would like to jump off from the clip early on where the young lady talks about how comforting it is to know Bella has someone looking out for her. Is that really the heart of Edward's appeal? I'd love to look a little more deeply at this, investigating the cultural climate young women exist in today and the way "Twilight" and the Bella/Edward (or even Bella/Jacob) relationship fits in with it.
In closing, I'd like to leave you with another Twilight video, courtesy of Saturday Night Live. I desperately wanted a way to fit it into the video essay, but just couldn't:
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5 comments:
I think your essay is fantastic. You've articulated in a thoughtful way your points, and I feel that this is a video to show both to scholars and to teens. I'm going to pass your video around and hopefully inspire some critical thinking!
Thank you. I'm glad my more media literacy-oriented hopes for the piece came through. Hopefully I'll get a glitch-free version of the video up this week.
hey well done! i loved this video very informative, current and accessible!
love
julie
Sara: I most appreciate how you allow the fans to have their feelings without condescending to them while also allowing for critique. I do wonder if there is a way to allow their words to have a stronger authority. The two part structure also works really well, allowing the ideas to influence and interact without suggesting that either side is "wrong" or "right," but rather that the two sets of ideas enforce and complicate each other. How would it alter your piece if we saw you? Why are you the VOG? I agree with KJM above that the piece speaks both to fans and scholars, and that's a feat to beproud of!
Nothing needs be said, really. I think your film is fantastic. Succinct, playful, and powerful in my opinion. Your feminist analysis of the Twilight series has made me (unfortunately perhaps) run out and buy the film. I'd love to see you take this same feminist analysis and apply it to a broad range of films aimed at female adolescence. It speaks volumes about the what feminists of this wave are missing. My opinion is that mass media (and new technologies) have the greatest impact on identity formation of young girls of this generation, yet sociologically, we haven't an idea how to engage or tackle the issues raised. What you are doing here, then is critical for examining current tropes of girlhood. That said, me likes!
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